GPS Tracking Is Better Than A Swindle Sheet
It’s really about time the trucking industry moved into the twentieth century … especially since we are now a number of years into the twenty-first.
MILWAUKEE — Most truckers play by the rules.
Mile for mile, they have fewer accidents than cars. When a car and truck collide in serious accidents, it’s usually the car driver’s fault.
But every day, significant percentages of commercial truck drivers disregard the rules that are supposed to limit how long they work. Every month, surveys have indicated, one in eight long-haul truckers dozes at the wheel. And every year, hundreds of people die in collisions involving tired truck drivers… “It would be difficult to construct a more irresponsible approach to a technology that can help control hours-of-service violations, reduce fatigue and help improve driver help,” Donaldson, senior research director of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said at a hearing in March. “This proposed rule is so utterly ludicrous, so contemptuous of the need to curtail the epidemic of drivers falsifying their logbooks so they can drive until they literally fall asleep at the wheel.” …”That’s between 14 and 15 fatalities every day,” said Don Osterberg, vice president of safety and driver training for Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider National Inc., one of the country’s largest trucking firms. “I firmly believe that that is unacceptable…” As reported here in the Arizona Daily Star, most truckers play by the rules, but some don’t.
The “rules” in question for interstate truckers are in the US Code of Federal Regulations, (49 CFR, Part 395) , written out in semi-plan English here at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration site.
Not only do these rules seem daunting to even an informed observer, the current method of compliance in use by virtually all carriers is overly complex, inflexible and ripe for either intentional or unintentional errors. It’s no accident that the common vernacular for the required truckers hours of service Record Of Duty Status (RODS) logbook is a “swindle sheet”.
The technology to electronically track these records using precision GPS time and position signals is not only readily available, it’s already in common use in the long-haul trucking industry and has been proven not to “cost’ but to “pay” in increased business profitability. One company, and really only one is effectively using government approved paperless logging … Werner enterprises … and here’s a typical comment from a Werner driver.
“When people ask about Paperless Logs at Werner, I tell them that it is my anchor for staying with this Company. To put it bluntly, I like to make easy money, and the Paperless Log System makes me more money everyday. Dispatching is quicker, and when it’s time to shut down the truck and get some sleep, that’s all I have to do.”
So why is the industry still fighting, arguing and foot-dragging? GPS-derived paperless logs will:
- Save Money
- Increase loads (and profitability)
- Save Lives
- Provide a positive Return On Investment.
Boggles my mind.